Omicron, and the Controlled Burn.

Hallo loves.

Just a very quick note as many of you are winding down for the night in the States and Europe.

This morning, the sunrise at 5:40 was so shockingly beautiful (and fleeting), I decided to flip on Instagram and do a quick live…and I started doing what I do….just chatting about what’s going through my head, which, lately, has been ecamingin my relationsyip between the News and My Life.

Since the Omicron Variant Headlines blared at me a few days ago, I have found myself at the butt end of my own joke, as I try to resist doomscrolling multiple times a day to see WHAT WILL BECOME OF MY LIFE. It is rare that the global headlines really effect what your normal, everyday life is going to look like tomorrow, next week, or in the spring. I WANT TO KNOW.

But I know, as you do, that the answer is probably farther off, and that checking our phones 26-178 times a day FOR THE ANSWER will probably just drive us crazy.

So I am urging you all to join me in a moment of discernment and restraint….the answers will come. We can check once a day. Or even less. The truth will be revealed and we don’t need the minutia and the play-by-play to plan our lives…it’ll just ruin our mental fields and plant landmines we don’t need to spend time evading.

Meanwhile….it was funny.

I decided that I would share my morning meditation practice over the internet with the 300 or so people tuned into my instagram live….and as i settled down to speak a prayer that all being be safe from harm and danger, peaceful and happy, and filled with compassion…I saw a fire.

A HUGE fire right across the hill from me. It looked like a few trees had caught ablaze.

Waiheke is a tiny island with a volunteer fire brigade. I couldn’t hear the fire siren. It was before six in the morning. I was like: I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE THIS ISLAND.

I said OH SHIT GUYS NO TIME TO MEDITATE GOTTA GO CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT EVERYTHING IS BURNING and I showed the vieweres the blaze for 3 seconds and stopped the live.

As I dialed 111 (the Kiwi equivalent of 911), I started thinking about how fast I could wake Ash up and get him out of the house in case the fire couldn’t be contained and burned this house down. I thought about where our passports were and that I should grab them.

The dispatch put me through to the fire department.

GIANT FIRE HERE IS THE ADDRESS, I said.

No worries, she said. We’ve gotten quite a few calls. It’s a controlled burn. Todayt’s the last day before the full fire ban.

Thank God. I said. It scared the shit out of me.

She laughed.

I hung up. I took a picture of it. I posted it to Instagram and said JK EVERYTHINGS HUNKY DORY.

……..

When Ash woke up a few mintues later, he looked out the window at the flames and smoke across the way said

MAMA A FIRE!!!!!!

and I said…Ash, there IS a fire!! But this is a Good Fire. Not a Bad Fire. Someone is doing a Good Fire to burn away some dead trees and stuff so the land can breathe. Sometimes there are Good Fires and sometimes there are Bad Fires.

………

Controlled Burn.

That’s what it feels like my life – and I am sure, many of your lives – has felt like for many, many months.

In so many ways, this image and this moment brought me peace this morning.

So much of my old life is in the process of being burned away so the land can breathe….the debris of past ideas, the dead and useless junk I was attached to, the old, rotting scripts I wrote when I was 15, 25, 35, 43…..Everything Must Go.

But….controlled. You cannot just set a match to the whole forest of your life as you move on. There’s an element of measuredness, control, compassion for the creatures around the fire…..the discernment. What the burn, when, what time of year, the cadence of flames.

Again with the discernment here.

I love you all.

May your controlled burn take away all the debris, but not massacre the filed of your life.

In news….I’ve got the Morra Hall show (the small hall show from Waiheke island) coming out TOMORROW (last day of the month, it’s always a scrambled but we’re gonna make it!

And I’m about to announce, finally, a time for a webcast this week, so stay tuned.

I’m busy burning. It’s been a tangled few weeks, but I have my machete and my matches.

If Omicron is coming, and isn’t benevolent …. just think:

Controlled Burn.

We got this.

See you tomorrow.

(reading comments til I delete this).

xxx

a